meet the students

Nina Simone's version of "Pirate Jenny" resonated against this weeks' readings.

We finally meet the students taking “African Americans in the City” this semester at the University of Alabama. To see them, click the video up top.  Jesse "NapNat" Childs, a friend from my college days in Chicago, generously created the lovely beats playing underneath this clip. This week, the students read about various attempts to build a European “empire”  on land now known as the United States. Using Leslie Harris’ study of African American labor in colonial New York,  they discovered how the Dutch helped establish slavery  here and elsewhere in the New World, but also how early New Yorkers of African descent, even enslaved ones, initially had some rights. Some even formed alliances with poor whites and Native Americans. But the color of one’s skin was eventually used to determine who was enslaved and who was “free.”  Here are the students' impressions of African American life during the colonial period in one city:

Raven: I did not expect to learn about …[early American] blacks being able to have land, join the military, and have legal rights.

Shariyah: I [now know] …how diverse our race was during the colonial period and how interracial groups met up in pubs.

Kalynn:  It is interesting to [know] that elite whites considered themselves superior to anyone of a lower class, regardless of race.

Roosevelt: When I think of [city life] now, I will think about the poor black[s] and whites that were working in an industrialized economy [long ago]…I want to know more.

Aaron: Leslie Harris… shed light on the common misconception that slavery only took place in the South or countryside. If you ask anyone to think about slavery, they will almost certainly think of a large plot of land with cotton fields and a huge white-[owned] plantation house rather than more industrial…settlements [with] greater population density. It is…important to consider every facet of the “peculiar institution.”

Tiffany: [After this week’s lesson], I will…think about the importance of class and race in the future.

Lauria: I will think about class structure in the future.  I will do so because so much has changed…Blacks were seen as the lowest of the low. [N]ow …people like Beyonce or Denzel Washington..are seen as better than whites like Lindsay Lohan…In the future, maybe we will … see people as [being] all the same;...Middle Eastern[er] s, Blacks, Whites, everyone.

Christin: I knew how whites would come together in the name of race, but [now I know] it was not always the case. Not only did blacks build the [city],  poor whites also [helped].

Alexis: [I learned] about the importance of names during the 16^th century. [It] was primarily for work purposes…Today names are [still] “created,”…but people with [names that seem unique] are stereotyped as [being] inferior.